I really wish I could embed this video, but I couldn't figure out how from the NY Times website. But many are working really hard to curb the violence in Juarez, a city literally right across the border from El Paso.

What isn't mentioned here is one of the stories that I worked on somewhat extensively as a Spanish student in college, referred to as the "Women of Juarez." The page I linked there, according to my research, is also somewhat inaccurate. While many groups will quote the number of dead women at somewhere are 400, most international groups estimate it at closer to 5,000. Hard to explain the disparity, except to say that perception is of the utmost importance in Juarez.

Amazingly, the first I had heard of this (and I'm guessing that many of you never have) was from the Jennifer Lopez movie Bordertown. Rent it if you can. It is actually a very well told story.

The story from the linked video is very true. The United States' insatiable desire for drugs is destroying Mexican border towns. Many of the gangs have moved into the U.S., in Arizona New Mexico, northern California, and even places like North Carolina and Virginia, with gruesome murders and torture. It is sickening to even talk about, but the problem is straightforward. The western hemisphere's drug problem is largely the United States' drug problem.

With these women, however, it gets more complicated. While most associate China with sweatshop labor, we need only look less than 500 feet from an American city to see where the worst happens. In factories (called maquiladoras) young women are employed for low wages and long hours, producing American goods. This demographic is picked for a frank reason - they don't complain. Most of these women have no choice. They are from poor families that desperately need the money. There is a scene in Bordertown where a kid is trying to connect his family's cardboard shack to a power line, electrocutes himself, drops the line, and burns down the entire neighborhood. This does happen.

But the worst is what is happening, unknown to much of the world, to these women. They are forced to take buses home in the dark, through some of the worst areas you can imagine. Juarez has this gambling area (shown in the movie) where mostly sex is sold. I would say think of Vegas, but it isn't close. I've heard of a place in Hong Kong that is closer, but the poverty level involved here makes it totally different. So, many of these women are kidnapped, brutally raped and then buried in shallow graves, thrown in ditches, or sometimes just into the middle of the street. Mothers who's daughters fail to come home from work literally go up to these fields and dig for their daughters. It is more work than the police force does.

The Mexican government has admitted that it even believes the number of missing or dead women to be in the thousands, and as you can see the military has been sent in to battle the drug cartels. But very little is done for these women, nor really against the cartels, due to one thing: billions of dollars. You may recall that President Obama talked about Juarez during his campaign, in opposition to CAFTA. Only four cities in North America, all in the U.S., have a larger manufacturing base.

Again, these women suffer because we need cheaper goods. Now, most of you know I hold some sympathy for outsourced factory work. I understand capitalism and realize there are prices paid, often in human lives or suffering. But I do believe that it is one thing to work someone hard and pay them little. It is another thing to be complicit, by means of not paying attention, in their brutal murder. If you think American companies don't know, you're crazy. If you think it's not good politics to keep this factories open and keep more immigrants out of the U.S., then let me enlighten you: it is. You think if jobs didn't exist in Juarez, that more immigrants wouldn't just hop the border? They would. And that would be bad for business in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.

Drug dealers and their competition that are dying by the thousands, these people are criminals. All of them are on some level and their high mortality rate is showing that. The 19-22 year old women are just part of the crossfire. At least learn about it.

And if you cannot picture what a city like this would look like, one that isn't at war, but really is, I can think of one example, simple as it may sound. Think of Gotham city, but without Batman. Juarez, Mexico is run by drug cartels, much the same as Columbia as a country, except these drug kingpins are not financing the neighborhoods and earning the trust of residents like happens there, they are simply killing anyone who gets in their way, and anyone else they feel like. So yes, Gotham city is what I can think of in a tangible way to compare it to.

Finally, a story to end this with. Two years ago I was sitting in the Dallas airport at 8 am, waiting for a connection to Knoxville, Tenn. I picked up the Dallas Morning News and the lead story was about drug cartels and Juarez and Arizona and California. There were gory stories about torture in Mexico and how far and wide violence was spread across the U.S. But one thing caught me. The story included court transcripts from a former gang member who was caught at the U.S. border. He had been asked about his knowledge of a murder in the Oakland/Richmond, Calif. area not long prior to that. Some of you may recall that not long prior to that, a former De La Salle football player, and current freshman, about to start his career at Oregon and just visiting his father for a few days, was shot and killed outside his father's house in Richmond. He was 19 and had no connection whatsoever to any gang, except that his father had been a gang member. Now, the two aren't related, but the fact that the person who shot Terrance Kelly shot the wrong person always connects these stories for me. The man profiled in the story said that, what he know, was that the leader of the gang had told a hit man to go find a guy, who was black, and kill him. And then he told his hit man, "if you can't find him, just shoot the first black guy you see."